Monday, September 16, 2013

Hey everyone!

Well, today promises to be an interesting day. There's a typhoon that's been rolling in since yesterday, and it's finally hitting our area right about.... now-ish. It's still pretty mild, but they're predicting the main typhoon won't actually hit for about another hour or so, and they're predicting about a half a meter of rain or so. Sounds exciting. So now it's a typhoon-p-day. A T-day! Yay!

It's been a relatively quiet week so far. There were several conferences and meetings that we went to, but other than that it was a pretty routine week. I'm actually really struggling to think of something interesting to share today... We'll see what I can come up with.

So, all of a sudden everybody is getting engaged. It's been over a year since I've left, and I can only think of one friend who's gotten engaged or married since then (that I've heard about at least), and that was way back in winter. Now, in just this last week, I've heard about several people all at once that are engaged. Is there something in the air over there? Haha! I was starting to wonder if anyone was actually going to get married while I was gone. So that's been pretty exiting. It makes me wonder how many more engagements I'll hear about this week.

So, as I'm typing this, I keep looking out the window and watching the wind and the rain. There's a tree that is getting pushed around quite a bit not too far from our back porch. It's really making me think about how sturdy trees really are. I mean, you think about how much force it takes to uproot a tree, and it's pretty impressive. These trees get blown around, and they just go right back to how they were before. And to think that these trees all start from little seeds that you can hold in your hand without any effort. It reminds me of a place in the Book of Mormon where a man named Alma teaches about faith. He talks about how the word of God is like a seed. First we have to give a place in our hearts for it to be planted, and then nurture it for it to grow. As it grows, our faith increases, until eventually the seed reaches maturity and becomes a large tree that can weather the storms and adversities of life. All of our testimonies start small, but given time they can grow into something that can weather a fierce storm like this one today.

Anyways, back to last week. Saturday night there was a stake priesthood meeting. Fuchu ward is the only ward I've served in here in the Musashino Stake, but I still knew maybe about a third of the people who came to the meeting. Way to represent! Fuchu ward is the best. There was one really interesting talk that I liked. One of the stake presidency shared an experience he had about a woman he worked with. She pretty much had just a really rough life. He would find small quiet ways to help her out, and sometimes some larger opportunities came up too. One of those times she had mentioned that that was the first time anybody had shown her kindness. Later, while she was at his home, she asked why he and his wife were so kind? His answer: because we are Christian. We follow the example of Christ and love and serve those around us. Really the most effective way we can share the gospel is to live it, like this brother did.

Well, sorry this week is a little short. Next week should have more interesting things to share. Talk to you all next week!